{"id":3961,"date":"2014-03-26T07:12:53","date_gmt":"2014-03-26T12:12:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/?p=3961"},"modified":"2014-03-26T18:16:23","modified_gmt":"2014-03-26T23:16:23","slug":"german-media-update-the-honeymoon-is-definitely-over","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/2014\/03\/26\/us-politics\/german-media-update-the-honeymoon-is-definitely-over\/","title":{"rendered":"German Media Update: The Honeymoon is Definitely Over"},"content":{"rendered":"

Times have changed in Germany since Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize and spoke before 200,000 enraptured fans in Berlin.\u00a0 Only 6,000 turned out to hear him when\u00a0he returned last year.\u00a0 Meanwhile, the media there, particularly since the recent events in Ukraine,\u00a0has been\u00a0resurrecting themes that were familiar during the Cold War.\u00a0 The political left is beginning to turn to Russia, and the political right is decrying the weakness of the Obama Administration.\u00a0 For example, while the overall tone of the main news magazine, Der Spiegel<\/em>, has been anti-Russian, Jakob Augstein, whose column “When in Doubt, to the Left<\/a>,” appears there regularly, wrote a couple of days ago:<\/p>\n

Media and political pundits want to breathe new life into an old “face of the enemy” (Feindbild):\u00a0 the evil Russian.\u00a0 As far as Russia is concerned, the West is in once again stuck in the same rut as in the cynical days of yesteryear, when US Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger publicly expressed his hope that the superpower in the East would go under “with a whimper, not with a bang.”\u00a0 Hillary Clinton just compared Putin to Hitler.\u00a0 That’s how one recommends oneself in the US as a potential Democratic presidential candidate.\u00a0 Meanwhile, the Russia policy of the two East Germans Merkel and (German President) Gauck is as resentful as if they were exploiting their offices for private trauma therapy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Meanwhile the polls are showing that the public isn’t inclined to tag along.\u00a0 A majority of Germans do not consider Putin unreasonable for viewing the Crimea as a Russian sphere of influence.\u00a0 (As opposed to Putin) the tendency to ignore and violate borders is a characteristic of the West.\u00a0 It constantly seeks to fish in troubled waters (“periklitieren”), to use one of Bismarck’s favorite expressions, outside of its own sphere of influence.\u00a0 Or, more to the point, it claims the whole world as its sphere of interest.\u00a0 That’s just the problem.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The West can never get enough, and is therefore insatiable… The Asians have finally drawn their own conclusions:\u00a0 the lamb must now itself become the wolf.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s clear from the reader\u00a0comments that appeared after a recent Spiegel<\/em> article on the crisis that Augstein hasn’t misrepresented German attitudes.\u00a0\u00a0The article itself, entitled, “The Ukraine:\u00a0 Obama Expresses Scorn for Ukraine as a Regional Power<\/a>,”\u00a0includes the understated byline, “This isn’t\u00a0how de-escalation should look.”\u00a0\u00a0 Some typical examples:<\/p>\n

The ineffectual US President dares to shoot his mouth off like this?\u00a0 He never seems to come up with anything concrete and positive except stupidities… I demand that his Nobel Peace Prize be revoked. (whiteelephant1)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The US is clearly on the path of escalation… It would be nice if the German media would adopt a more critical attitude, and not always just go along with everything\u00a0the US\/EU says.\u00a0 Putin isn’t the danger.\u00a0 The danger comes from those who now sense an opportunity to finish Russia once and for all.\u00a0 That’s what this is really about.\u00a0 (mc6206)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Very nice, Mr. Obama, just keep playing with fire.\u00a0 After all, thank God there’s a buffer zone between Russia and your homeland in case Russia loses its nerve.\u00a0 It’s called EUROPE!\u00a0 (Korf)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If Russia is just a “regional power,” and one has more important problems to deal with, why these hysterical attempts to isolate Russia and portray her in a bad light.\u00a0 Who is supposed to be swallowing such stupidities from Obama?\u00a0 (itf)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, we’re not exactly seeing a return\u00a0to the last super-eruption of anti-Americanism in Germany that reached its climax about 15 years ago, but the honeymoon is clearly over.<\/p>\n

UPDATE:\u00a0 Der Spiegel<\/em> just published its take on an interview with former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt that appeared in the weekly newspaper, Die Zeit<\/em>.\u00a0 Schmidt is a highly intelligent man whose memoirs are well worth reading, and who can hardly be described as anti-American.\u00a0 Der Spiegel<\/em> headlines the interview, “Former Chancellor Schmidt Defends Putin’s Ukraine Policy<\/a>.”\u00a0 The byline reads, “Helmut Schmidt finds the actions of Russia in the Crimea ‘completely understandable,’ and considers sanctions ‘dumb stuff’ (dummes Zeug).\u00a0 No doubt the situation in Ukraine is dangerous – however, in the former Chancellor’s opinion, the West is at fault.”<\/p>\n

A few excerpts from the article in Der Spiegel<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Schmidt was highly critical of the way in which the Crimea crisis has been handled in the West.\u00a0 He referred to the sanctions imposed on Russia by the European Union and the USA as “dumb stuff.”\u00a0 In Schmidt’s opinion, attempts to impose further sanctions would be misguided.\u00a0 For the most part they would have merely symbolic value, “but they would affect the West just as much as the Russians.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Schmidt’s words provide support to those taking part in the debate in Germany who favor looking at things from the Russian point of view.\u00a0 Former Chancellor and party colleague Gerhard Schr\u00f6der recently spoke in similar terms.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to Schmidt, the situation in Ukraine is “dangerous, because the West has worked itself into a frenzy.”\u00a0 (literally, “has become terribly excited”)\u00a0 As a result, “the overwrought reaction in the West has naturally led to a similar overwrought reaction in Russian public opinion and politics.”\u00a0 Referring to the (reserved) policy of Chancellor Angela Merkel the 95-year old said, “In this case praise for the caution of the German Chancellor is appropriate.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So far the editorial narrative at Der Spiegel<\/em> has been mainly anti-Russian.\u00a0 However, there has been a shift to a more circumspect approach lately, with articles critical of right wing nationalists<\/a> in the current Kiev regime, taking note of western media darling Yulia Timoshenko’s hateful tirade against Putin in an overheard telephone conversation<\/a> in which she said she was “ready to pick up a machine pistol and shoot this piece of crap in the head,” suggesting the use of nuclear weapons to kill Russians, and so on.\u00a0 It is noteworthy that the German Green Party, which has tacked to the right in recent years, immediately condemned Schmidt’s comments<\/a>, while the Party of the Left, positioned to the left of the German Socialist Party (SPD), praised his remarks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tTweet<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Times have changed in Germany since Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize and spoke before 200,000 enraptured fans in Berlin.\u00a0 Only 6,000 turned out to hear him when\u00a0he returned last year.\u00a0 Meanwhile, the media there, particularly since the recent events in Ukraine,\u00a0has been\u00a0resurrecting themes that were familiar during the Cold War.\u00a0 The political left is … Continue reading “German Media Update: The Honeymoon is Definitely Over”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[19,24,15,20,54,21,13,30],"tags":[139,267],"class_list":["post-3961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anti-americanism","category-demonization","category-der-spiegel","category-germany","category-russia","category-the-media","category-us-politics","category-world-politics","tag-germany-2","tag-media"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pwEq0-11T","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3961"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3964,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3961\/revisions\/3964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}